From Coaches to Architects: Unlocking Team Brilliance

Imagine: You're a master jeweler, tasked with polishing a diamond. Despite your skill and the painstaking attention to each facet, it's never going to achieve the highest brilliance if it was poorly cut to begin with. This analogy is strikingly relevant for Agile Coaches. You can possess all the coaching acumen in the world, but if the team you're dealing with has a fundamentally flawed design, their potential for 'brilliance’ will be limited.

Team design isn't just an initial step; it's the foundation for long-term success and agility. A carefully constructed team is not only effective but also a breeding ground for innovation and adaptability in the face of challenges. In contrast, a poorly designed team becomes a coaching nightmare, impervious to improvement despite top-notch coaching.

The Real Curve of Team Success

What defines an effective team? It's a team that not only consistently exceeds stakeholder expectations but also shows ongoing improvement and nurtures the career and personal development of every member. When it comes to team performance, our perception often leans towards a bell-curve distribution—most teams are average, some are bad, and a few are excellent. In reality, team performance follows a "power law distribution," where a small number of teams achieve exceptional results, while the majority hover around subpar performance. This raises an important question: Why do only a limited number of teams attain peak performance, despite substantial investments in coaching, time, and resources?

The Missing Link in Team Effectiveness

Successful teams are not born; they are made, nurtured under conditions that unleash their potential. Inspired by the foundational research of Wageman and Hackman, six crucial conditions are identified that make up about 80% of a team's effectiveness. We need to design and launch teams with these conditions in mind to "stack the deck" in favor of a team becoming highly effective.

Foundational Conditions

• Compelling Direction: A shared, invigorating purpose that fuels performance.
• Real Team: Ensuring that the team is stable, interdependent, and united in their shared goals.
• Right People: Assembling a diverse team with the right skillsets and collaborative spirit.

Enabling Conditions

• Sound Structure: Crafting a design and work structure that supports teamwork.
• Supportive Context: Providing essential resources and a conducive environment.
• Team Coaching: Expert guidance to propel performance.

Picture this as akin to cultivating a healthy tree. Just as optimal sunlight, soil, and water are necessary for a tree's growth, the right conditions pave the way for teams to flourish. Ignoring these vital conditions, while focusing solely on coaching techniques, is like expecting a plant to grow without sunlight - a futile endeavor.

From Seed to Success: The Emergence of Vital Team Processes

By laying down foundational conditions—akin to a tree's need for 'soil, sunlight, and water'—you set the stage for your team's essential processes to excel. These processes—effort, task strategies, and the application of knowledge and skills—act as the 'engine' driving your team's effectiveness. Just as a tree depends on sunlight and nutrients for vital functions like photosynthesis, your team requires an optimal setting to succeed in its core activities. In such a nurturing environment, your team is prepared to transition from average to exceptional, especially with the added benefit of expert coaching.

Effort: This goes beyond merely clocking in hours. It is about the team working cohesively, leveraging the efforts of all members in a synergistic manner. When individuals align with the team's goals, they naturally give their best, not just "doing a job" but actively pursuing a shared vision.

Task Strategies: This is not your average checklist. It’s the strategic blueprint the team follows to tackle complex goals. The focus is on innovation and smart coordination. Team members anticipate challenges, think creatively, and are agile in their approach, ensuring that they not only meet but exceed expectations.

Application of Knowledge and Skill: This is the art of harnessing each team member's unique abilities and insights. Imagine a diverse garden where each plant—symbolizing individual skills—contributes to overall vitality. In this dynamic ecosystem, team members teach and learn from each other, fostering continual growth and adaptability.

It's crucial to understand that each team is as distinct as individual species in a natural habitat. While these three key processes are universally important, fostering, supporting, or coaching them should be adapted to align with the team's unique qualities and challenges.

Beyond Coaching: Architects of Agility

The core purpose of Agile Coaching goes well beyond mere practices and processes; it serves as the foundational element that enables organizations to adapt, evolve, and swiftly pivot in today's ever-changing environment. However, many attempts at agile transformation fall short or fail entirely.

Revisiting our key question—why do only a select few teams reach peak performance despite our efforts—the answer often traces back to an unrealized potential of our roles.

We need to step into our role as Agile Team Architects, shifting the core question from "How can we be better coaches?" to the pivotal, “How can we design conditions that give rise to effective teams?” Engaging early in strategic conversations with organizational leaders is crucial to this evolution. We're not just experts in agile processes or practices; we are strategic partners. Our role is to collaboratively shape an organizational environment where agile teams can flourish. By adopting this broader, more integrated role, we can effectively facilitate the success of our journey towards agility.

Let's close out by keeping J. Richard Hackman's advice in mind:

"I have no question that when you have a team, the possibility exists that it will generate magic, producing something extraordinary. But don't count on it."

Are you prepared to be the architect that turns teams' latent magic into a likely reality?

References and Resources

• Book - 2002?Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances, by?J. Richard Hackman?
• Book - 2008 Wageman et al.?Senior Leadership Teams: What it takes to make them great, Harvard Business School Press?
• Kyle J. Bradley, Herman Aguinis (2022) Team Performance: Nature and Antecedents of Nonnormal Distributions. Organization Science 34(3):1266-1286.
• The Science and Art of Designing a Team for Success: 6 Conditions with Ruth Wageman